As the stock market crashes and the global economy reels from President Donald Trump's illogical and reckless tariffs, Trump's supporters are doing their best to put a positive spin on the crisis he has created.
For example, Christian nationalist pseudo-historian Tim Barton claims that support for Trump's tariff policy can be found in the Bible.
To make his case, Barton cited the story in Matthew 17 where Jesus and Peter were discussing paying the “temple tax.” In this passage, Jesus argued that just as the “kings of the earth” do not levy taxes on their own children, neither should he, as the son of God, be required to pay the tax in order to enter the temple.
24 After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”
25 “Yes, he does,” he replied.
When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?”
26 “From others,” Peter answered.
“Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him. 27 “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”
In Barton's view, this exchange amounts to Jesus endorsing tariffs.
"One of the things in the Bible that when it gets into taxes and Jesus was questioned about paying the temple tax," Barton said. "[Jesus] says, 'Do the kings tax the sons or the foreigners?' And Peter says, 'Well, of course it's the foreigners,' and Jesus said, 'Well, I agree, but since we don't want to offend them, go and catch a fish [with a] coin in the mouth and we're gonna pay the taxes.'"
"It's interesting because a tariff is a tax on foreign goods," he continued. "When Jesus is asking like this semi-rhetorical question—what to them is an obvious answer, like, the king doesn't tax their own sons, they don't tax their own people, they tax the foreigners—we oftentimes read the Bible and don't connect what the reality is of where that application is. What is he really saying? He's making a connection that it's obvious that we should be taxing the people that are bringing goods in, not just taxing the people that are making goods here."
"It's just interesting that so often we can read scripture and see a story and miss sometimes direct application," Barton added. "In my mind this was direct application for tariffs. The idea that Jesus is asking this question of, 'Do king tax sons or foreigners?' and the answer was obvious, well, the king taxes foreigners, not the sons, which is what a tariff is."
On no level does Barton's argument make any sense.
First of all, Jesus was not teaching a parable about economics, but was rather signaling he was exempt from the temple tax, which was established in Exodus and reaffirmed in Nehemiah, because of his unique position as the son of God.
Secondly, Jesus did not say that kings only tax foreigners, as Barton claimed. He simply said that kings do not tax their own literal children. Instead, Jesus said, kings collect taxes "from others," meaning their subjects.
Finally, it is widely known that tariffs are a tax on importers and are not, therefore, paid by "foreigners," as Barton said. Instead, tariffs drive up the prices paid by consumers. As such, even if Barton's interpretation of this passage in Matthew was accurate, Trump's tariffs would be decidedly unbiblical since they amount to a tax on "his children."
Barton's argument is utter nonsense and is a prime example of the way in which Christian nationalists routinely misrepresent passages from the Bible and rip them out of context in order to promote their right-wing political agenda. In this regard he continues to follow in the footsteps of his father David, who has claimed that Jesus’ parables and other scriptural passages mean that God is opposed to minimum wage laws, capital gains taxes, and “socialist union kind of stuff.”
